Lippmann was schooled at the Lycée Napoleon and the École Normale. He worked for the French government for awhile, studying methods of teaching science. He worked with Kühne andKirchhoff in Heidelberg and with Helmholtz in Berlin.

His research interests including electricity, optics, photochemistry, and thermodynamics. He also studied the relationship between capillary phenomena and electricity, which led to the development of an extremely sensitive capillary electrometer. In 1886, he developed a theory on how to create colour photographs, but it was unfortunately not practical at the time. After years of careful experimentation, he was able to present this procedure to the Academy of the Sciences, and consequently publish it.

Lippmann made many contributions to various branches of the sciences throughout his career. He developed photographic registration and worked to eliminate irregularities in pendulum clocks. His invention of the coelostat was used in astronomy to take pictures of stars.